As the possibility of extinction became more widely established in the sciences, so did the prospect of human extinction. Beyond science, human extinction was explored in literature. The Romantic authors and poets were particularly interested in the topic. The first time the concept of human extinction was explored in literature in 1816, “The Year Without Summer.” Lord Byron wrote about the extinction of life on earth in his 1816 poem ‘Darkness’, and in 1824 envisaged humanity being threatened by a comet impact, and employing a missile system to defend against it. Mary Shelley’s 1826 novel The Last Man is set in a world where humanity has been nearly destroyed by a mysterious plague.